Anti-terror drive yet to be effective in Balochistan

ISLAMABAD: While the fruits of inclusive anti-terrorist operations across Pakistan are abundantly visible in every nook and corner, the drive is yet to impinge hard on such criminals to wipe them out of Balochistan, which keeps booming with catastrophes.

This year alone or to be precise in the last ten weeks, two major terrorist occurrences hit Quetta in which at least 135 persons were killed and dozens others wounded, some of them critically.

It is another monumental failure of the security apparatus not to check Tuesday’s tragedy. This inability and incapacity becomes more telling in view of a remark of Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri, who stated after the deadly attack on the police training college that the government had received intelligence reports a couple of days ago about the presence of some militants who had entered Quetta to carry out subversive activities.

What did his government or the intelligence and security agencies do to annihilate the designs of the terrorists? Obviously, all of them were found napping to foil the suicide attack.

Of the four major terrorist incidents that happened in Pakistan this year, two took place in Quetta alone. On August 8, a suicide bomber targeted the emergency ward of the Civil Hospital in Quetta, killing at least 73 people and leaving scores injured. A Balochistan bar association leader, who had been earlier shot dead by terrorists, had been brought to the medical facility which was stormed by the criminals according to a well chalked out plan. A whole generation of lawyers was obliterated in this assault.

Two and a half months later, the police training college has come under attack, claiming more than sixty lives of cadets and others. The two other devastating terrorist attacks during the current year took place on March 27 in which seventy-five people were killed and hundreds injured in an explosion that targeted Christians near a park in Lahore, and on September 17 when the Friday congregation in a mosque was hit in the tribal area in which thirty-six worshippers embraced martyrdom.

Apart from these incidents, there has been welcome calm because of the concerted military operation Zarb-e-Azb and other campaigns launched by security forces and police. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and tribal areas, which have been the main victim of the terrorists’ acts for years, are experiencing an encouraging fundamental change with their people heaving a sigh of relief.

Their location close to Afghanistan is similar to the situation of Balochistan with the war-torn country, which is hardly cooperating with Pakistan to take on the terrorist elements operating from its soil against its neighbour. Pakistan’s efforts to put some sense in the Kabul rulers have been unproductive.

The reason is clear: Afghanistan is not a free country and is doing what it is tasked by India and the United States, which has its forces there for more than a decade.

Even on Sunday, an American general based in Afghanistan alleged that the Haqqani network has a free movement in Pakistan. His assertion speaks of the deep estrangement of Washington with Pakistan and Kabul’s shelter to the terrorists in its territory.

Inspector General of the Frontier Corps Major General Sher Afgan said after the college incident that communication intercepts showed that the suicide bombers were receiving directions from Afghanistan.

When the American forces having the most sophisticated gadgetry to monitor conversations and movements are not taking action against terrorists working against Pakistan from Afghanistan, it is not without a cause or reason. Kabul, New Delhi and Washington want Islamabad to continuously bleed for furtherance of their greater agenda.

However, Pakistani authorities can’t shirk their supreme responsibility of frustrating terrorist attacks even directed from Afghan soil. They are duty-bound to track down the local criminals, facilitators and handlers.